Hyde by Daniel Levine

(hb; 2014)

From the back cover

“Mr. Hyde is trapped, locked in Dr. Jekyll’s surgical cabinet, counting the hours until his inevitable capture. As four days pass, he has the chance, finally, to tell his story─the story of his brief, marvelous life.

“Summoned to life by strange potions, Hyde knows not when or how long he will have control of ‘the body.’ When dormant, he watches Dr. Jekyll’s high-class life from a paralyzed remove. Soon, their mutual existence is threatened, not only by the uncertainties of untested science, but also by a mysterious stalker. Hyde is being taunted─possibly framed. Girls have gone missing; someone has been killed. Who stands, watching, from the shadows? In the blur of this shared consciousness, can Hyde ever be confident these crimes were not committed by his hand?”

Review

Hyde is a chatty, often entertaining POV-reversal take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Levine succeeds in making Hyde a sympathetic character─a victim driven by damage-control circumstances, blackmail and a dominant, uptight personality that is Dr. Jekyll. This is worth reading if you can put up with semi-regular rambling between important plot points and character exchanges. To its credit, Hyde’s tone and other elements match those of its source inspiration book despite its considerably longer length. This is worth reading, checking out from the library.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

(hb; 1886)

From the inside flap

“It is about the strange a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who investigates occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Mr. Hyde.”

Review

Strange is a superb-for-its-time, sketched-out and memorable short read, one that deserves its characters-iconic status among readers. The writing is occasionally chatty but otherwise it is a true classic, not just a chatfest, hot-air book that a bunch of so-called “intellectuals” deemed to be great. Worth reading and worth owning for a few bucks. It has inspired a lot of offshoot stories and movies, too many to list in this mini-review.

The Twelve Frights of Christmas edited by Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh & Martin H. Greenberg

(1986: horror/science fiction anthology.  "Introduction" by Isaac Asimov.)

From the back cover:

"We wish you a macabre Christmas with thirteen of the best horror tales of the season. Hang on to your stocking with very special care by 'The Chimney,' a chiller about what really comes down from the roof on Christmas Eve. Or join Robert Bloch on 'The Night Before Christmas' by trimming the tree. . . in a shocking fashion. It's hardly a silent night even in outer space, where Arthur C. Clarke makes our blood run cold with the truth about Bethelhem's star.

"So curl up by those chestnuts roasting on an open fire. . . as these masters leave you screaming on a white Christmas."


Overall review:

Quality-wise, this anthology is a mixed bag.

Seven of the stories are good or excellent, the rest are decent or unpublishable (those that fall into this category often run too long; with some quick trimming, they, too, might've been excellent, or at least publishable).

Worth checking out from the library, this. Don't spend your money on it.


Review, story by story:


1.) "The Chimney" - Ramsey Campbell: A boy discovers another spirit of Christmas. Miasmic, relentless, childhood-true.


2.) "Markheim" - Robert Louis Stevenson: An impoverished criminal (Markheim), trying to complete what appears to be a successful crime, is interrupted by a wily stranger. Overly long, chatty, sharp-humored story.

"Markheim" has been filmed twice.

The first version, a twenty-five minute short, aired on Polish television on January 28, 1972. It was directed and scripted by Janusz Majewski.

Jerzy Kamsas played Markheim. Grazyna Dluglecka played Karolinka. Aleksander Bardini played Antykwariusz. Jan Tesarz played Pijak.

The second version aired on British television on December 24, 1974. Tina Wakerell directed the film, from a script by Tom Wright.

Derek Jacobi played Markheim. Paul Curran played "The Dealer". Julian Glover played "The Stranger". Sally Kinghorn played "The Maid".


3.) "The Night Before Christmas" - Robert Bloch: A portrait painter gets caught in the middle of a dangerous divorce between a rich man and his beautiful wife. Suspenseful, witty, noir- and horror-veracious tale.


4.) "The Festival" - H.P. Lovecraft: In the town of Kingsport, a questing man, honoring the wishes of his people, attends a terrifying, subterranean, once-a-century "Yule-rite".

This is a typical Lovecraft story: vivid, miasmic-mood descriptions, oozing/spooky locales and, of course, a touch of madness. The story ends on a tepid - compared to what precedes it - note, but otherwise it's okay.


5.) "The Old Nurse's Story" - Mrs. Gaskell: Ultra-chatty first-person POV tale -- too loquacious for this reader: I stopped reading it two pages into the story.


6.) "Glámr" - S. Baring-Gould: Long than necessary, but overall okay Norse horror story about a ghost-/vampire-haunted sheepwalk.


7.) "Pollock and the Porroh Man" - H.G. Wells: Pollock, a callous man, falls prey to a witch doctor's vengeful predation. Good, colorful story.


8.) "The Weird Woman" - Anonymous: Two brothers (Frank and Oswald Tregethan), along with a cousin (Cicely Mostyn), arrive at their dead uncle's estate in North Wales to attend the reading of his will, only to fall under the dark sway of "The Tregethan Curse".

Atmospheric, spooky, exciting tale.


9.) "The Hellhound Project" - Ron Goulart: 2030 A.D. Thad McIntosh, a homeless man, is asked by the Opposition Party to go undercover, investigate and stop a mysterious corporate secret weapons program.

Fun science fiction/action story, with lots of twists and twisty characters.


10.) "Wolverden Tower" - Grant Allen: Mostly-solid tale about a young woman (Maisie Llewelyn), whose arrival at Wolverden Hall sets off a series of supernatural events.

The story's deep flaws reside in its excessive length and its anticlimactic, obvious-early-on finish.


11.) "Planet of Fakers" - J.T. McIntosh: Alien, human-possessing telepaths (Procarpans) threaten to take over a human population on an alien planet. Good, clever, plot- and character-wending piece.


12.) "Life Sentence" - James McConnell: Oliver Symmes, an institutionalized aged murderer, relives, again and again, the events that led him to his current situation. Well-written, okay-plot work.


13.) "The Star" - Arthur C. Clarke: Scientists, investigating the aftermath of a supernova, discover humanity-altering veracities among the scattered cosmic rocks.

This is an excellent, intellectualized story that sports a big nod at Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Lighthousekeeping, by Jeanette Winterson

(hb; 2004)

From the inside flap:

"Orphaned and anchorless, Silver is taken in by blind Mr. Pew, the mysterious and miraculously old keeper of the Cape Wrath lighthouse. As the lighthouse beam illuminates a swath of water, so do stories emerge from the vast ocean of Pew's memory: the history of Cape Wrath and its founder Babel Dark, a nineteenth-century clergyman. Dark lived two lives: a public one mired in darkness and deceit, and a private one bathed in the light of a passionate love. For Silver, Dark's life becomes a map through her own particular darkness, into her own story, and, finally, into love."

Review:

This is one of the best books I've read this year.

I expected it to be great, as Winterson's narratives are often fractured (they leap-frog through time, space, form and voice), but not this great.

The story: an "lighthousekeeping" orphan, Silver, tells, in a first-person narrative, of her childhood (beginning in 1969, when she and her balance-challenged dog, DogJim, are taken in by the latest lighthousekeeper, blind Pew), the history of Salts (the barren seaside town she, DogJim and Pew reside in), the life-story of the minister Babel Dark (whose tortured, 19th-century double life eventually tears him apart), and eventually, of her adulthood, post-1989 (Tim Burton's Batman is mentioned, in passing).

It's difficult, nearly impossible to do this book justice. It's sparsely-worded, symbolic, passionate, sad, cleverly funny, sublime, genre-defying and altogether enchanting.

As with other Winterson novels (The PowerBook comes to mind), it's also literary: Robert Louis Stevenson, author of the 1886 classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Charles Darwin (whose 1859 anthropological study, On the Origin of Species, also changed the world) make brief appearances, their ideas and persons an integral, interwoven part of Silver's tales.

Own this, if you can.

Silence in Hanover Close, by Anne Perry

(pb; 1988: ninth book in the Charlotte & Thomas Pitt series)

From the back cover:

“When Inspector Pitt was asked to reopen a three-year-old murder case which had taken place in London’s luxurious Hanover Close, he was all too aware that his superiors wanted him to smooth things over.

“But penetrating the reserve of high society households would take more finesse than Pitt could muster. Enter Charlotte Pitt, his wellborn wife, and her sister, Emily. As the social equals of the inhabitants of the Close, the women would be privy to conversation that would never reach the ears of a mere policeman. What they found was a secret so shocking it would lead to more deaths – and quite possibly Pitt’s own.”

Review:

Perry takes her main characters – Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, Lady Emily Ashworth – into new, and incredibly life-threatening, situations in the ninth entry of her Pitt mystery series.

Six months have elapsed since the deaths of Cardington Crescent. Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde has been published the previous year, and is scaring the willickers out of the reading public. Jemima Pitt, daughter of Thomas and Charlotte, is six; the Pitts’ son, Daniel, is “nearly five” – both of the children are eagerly counting down the days to a niveous Christmas.

Winter is not so kind to Thomas: an old case has been foisted on him to “smooth over”, not solve. Charlotte, ever-curious about her husband’s cases, gets involved, and in doing so, involves Emily, who’s unofficially being courted by the impecunious and rakishly handsome Jack Radley (who first appeared in Cardington Crescent). Emily’s problem is that social etiquette demands that she continue to publicly mourn her husband, George (poisoned in the last book), though she’s ready to move on with her life.

A role-reversal theme infuses Silence with fresh thrills – Charlotte, with the aid of Emily and Jack, goes undercover, adopting the fake identity of Miss Elizabeth Barnaby, a wellborn woman seeking a husband; Emily becomes Amelia Gibson, a maid in the household where a new murder has been committed. And Thomas, framed for a different killing, is arrested.

Another great, twist-filled book in a consistently gripping series, this.

Followed by Bethlehem Road.